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May 17, 2021

PROCESS MINING LIVE- SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: Advancing Your Digital Transformation with Process Mining

Courtesy of Molex, LLc's Anthony Huffman, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Advancing Your Digital Transformation with Process Mining' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at Process Mining Live Virtual Conference.

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Session Information:

Advancing Your Digital Transformation with Process Mining

Given today’s digital transformed world, new ways of working are shifting from physical to digital. This session will explore how your organization can make sense of the digital processes embedded within these newly established technologies using Process Mining.

Process Mining can not only uncover new ways to generate value by visualizing wasteful actions across your enterprise, but it can also act as a mechanism to incentivize and govern better practices. With thousands of end users, most organizations struggle to understand what is truly happening in their global technology platforms such as ERP, MES, and PLM.

It is time to lift the veil of these digital systems and uncover new levers to drive out waste in your organization.

Key Takeaways:

  • What Process Mining is and how it fits into an overarching Digital Transformation Vision
  • The Process Mining Vendor Landscape and current market trends
  • How Process Mining can uncover new insights to improve your operations
  • Why Process Mining is so important to incentivizing and governing better practices
  • Real life Process Mining use cases that have proven to show significant value
  • How to get started, the Process Mining framework

Session Transcript:

Cultural level. So I'm welcoming Anthony Husband to be with us. I'm excited to have you here with us, Anthony. Anthony has over 15 years of operation experienced in electronics, life, sciences, and aerospace manufacturing industries. Has expertise in the range of digital transformation technologists, and is a recognized expert in operational excellence. He has improved operations in more than 20 countries. Stablish Incapability is found on the ... Business System, and the Toyota Production System, a real practitioner, a real leader of the things that we're talking about here in process mining live. Anthony, what a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for sharing your gifts with our global audience today.

Now, thanks, Josie, and thanks everyone, for joining.

I know some of you are joining around the world, so it could be late, it could be early for you, I appreciate your time today.

I've got a short presentation, I'll go ahead and share my screen, but I do want this to be more interactive.

So hopefully, you've got questions at the end, but do feel free to jump in if you have questions, If I use an acronym you're not familiar with, or if you want more detail.

All right, so, we'll go ahead and get started here.

I'm with a company called ..., we're a global company that you probably I've never heard of, but use our products on a day-to-day basis. They actually say, you can't be five feet away from one of our devices.

We manufacturer electronic solutions, electronic components.

We have about 80 manufacturing plants globally.

We're at about 45,000 employees.

We have 13 supply chain hubs, so it's a pretty large organization.

We have a pretty complex environment of a multitude of systems, and there's a lot of opportunity to deploy tools like process mining.

I'm leading a pretty large initiative that reads across our entire enterprise, The one ...

initiative that we have, and process mining has really given us another lever to pull to create value using digital capability.

I've been at this company for about six years. Prior to this, I was in the med device industry.

And the aerospace industry is, and what, what's unique about Molex as we serve, almost every industry.

So think about electronics.

It's in everything that that you basically deal with across across the world. So we've got a lot of challenges. A lot of opportunities. We've been growing pretty significantly.

Screenshot 8-1Our parent company Koch Industries is the world's largest private company, and so they've actually invested quite a bit in digital capability and feel like malik's can be a big part of their transition into a tech company.

So, let's talk about process mining, and how it impacts small acts.

The agenda today, I'm going to talk to you about what process mining is, what it means to us, and how it fits into our wider digital transformation initiative.

We've got a pretty wide reaching initiative, like I said, and process mining helps enable parts of that. I'll talk about how it fits together.

What's been key for us is tying that to the initiatives that are more strategic, that are wide reaching.

We started with process mining as just zero point solutions and experiments, and once you can tie that, the strategy to it, you get a lot more momentum, a lot more excitement.

The second part of this presentation will talk a little bit about the vendors. What's out there? I'm not tied to any specific vendor.

We have used a few in the past, and I'll give you a sense for pros and cons and what what we recommend.

The process mining framework is something that was developed. We have a kind of approach to this, a methodology and accompanying that is a framework. So we've got step by step process, how to use process mining to help drive operational excellence in your digital transformation initiatives.

And then finally, I'll just recap, I'll talk about all the elements of the framework, and then hit on some of the key points that I covered in the presentation at the end.

Again, open, there's a lot of good questions and feedback, if you do have any comments or things along the way, feel free to interrupt.

Alright, so as you've probably heard throughout the day, the transformations that are happening across industry, especially manufacturing, are opening up a lot of new data points, So we've got all of this data.

We've invested pretty heavily and our ERP systems are making big strides in our product life cycle management platforms, we've got a manufacturing execution system we're deploying, we've got other tools that we can tap into.

And so what that does is create all of this opportunity to, to collect that data, create a digital thread of information, and then build insights on top of it.

Now, what I see is, the opportunity we have is, with process mining, you can take a look at those transactional processes, understand the current state, and then monitor and measure it going forward. and it's been a game changer in our ERP system.

We're now looking at how do we be proactive and deploy that alongside our deployment of new manufacturing execution systems, and eventually our product development, life cycle management systems.

And so you've seen this evolution of continuous improvement.

You know, I've been at this, like Josie said, for about 15 years, various industries working on Toyota production system, evolve to the daina her business system, and where you see the industry going, is this this buzzword of industry four, but, but it's really about two things. It's about data, that's about automation.

And for process mining, understanding your data landscape, being able to mine information, and understand where the opportunities are to apply automation to apply continuous improvement is really a game changer for us.

And I think it's still a fairly new concept out there and it takes awhile to get people to understand the benefits.

But but I think if you can tie it to that continuous improvement, the operational excellence initiatives, you can really get some momentum.

And I think it's just going to evolve over time. We're going to get better and better at our ability to apply it across multiple systems.

And then, as we build this vision of a digital thread, we can apply it in a multitude of areas in ways that we typically don't Consider for operational excellence today, I think primarily we've been focused on the operation side, on the manufacturing floor. This widens our scope and gives us the ability to improve. Also, those transactional processes on the front and the back end.

We actually did a pretty detailed analysis as part of our business case for this: this why, overarching transformation that looks at improving our product development all the way through manufacturing and end of life.

And we partnered with Deloitte.

They actually came in, and, and performed an analysis. This isn't the actual analysis.

This is just the representation, but what they were able to uncover is that about 40% of the handoffs, the processes that were in place with our engineering communities.

So, from design engineering, through product engineering, through the manufacturing and industrial engineering, through quality engineering, there was about 40% of that effort that was just wasteful. People working in silos, people working in home-grown systems, maybe excell, maybe e-mails back and forth, lots of handoffs.

And so, it took quite a bit of time to just gather this amount of information.

Btog CTAWe had to go into a multitude of systems, understand what our complexities look like, to be able to create this handoff analysis.

And coming out of it, we said, we need to do this quicker. We need to do it more efficiently. We need to then, somehow, monitor and control this moving forward. So we have a vision to get to a less complex environment to reduce a big portion of that waste.

And then to monitor and measure it. And so, process mining is a big part of how we're going to improve our way to manage all that information flow on that data.

Handoff process.

So what is process mining? For us?

it's, you know, a digital twin of those transactional processes.

So, as companies like Molex employed new software's new platform.

So we're looking at ERP systems.

We've got product life cycle Management, MIS. We're looking at new global sales and operations planning systems.

All of these systems are designed to operate in a certain way, and what we wanna do with process mining is then decompose and recomposed it.

So defining what good looks like, giving a good business process, and then being able to monitor and measure that iterate and improve.

And so today, know, without process mining, we typically do process mapping, so we'll go and map a process, usually in a tool like Visio.

It'll take a long time and take a lot of subject matter experts to put that together.

We found that when we did that handoff analysis, I think it took 200 hours of work just to put together an analysis on one part number. We have 150,000 and products. And so, for us, there's gotta be a better way.

And another thing is that that process mapping exercise is only a snapshot in time and only gives you that picture of that certain timeframe And all of your opportunities are usually estimated.

So we don't really know how scalable it is until you start using tools like process mining and process mining gives you, you're able to actually take that the actual data, the data that's in the system, be able to map that with, know, new technologies that mine the information.

And give you a snapshot of what the true state is, a lot of assumptions are made and transactional processes in this, this gives that transparency to the organization to really understand, what are you doing across your entire enterprise?

Those opportunities for improvements are jumping right out at you. So, you'll be able to see where there are missteps where there are too many steps. I think what happens over time, typically, with transactional processes, is some of them make a mistake, or a customer will find an issue. And so, you'll add layers of complexity to solve it, and never go back and remove that.

Or Error proof it to make it go away.

The risks, There's a big part of this.

So, risk optimization is one of our philosophies, and so we use process mining to understand where there may be gaps in the process. Maybe we're missing Something from a regulatory perspective or or compliance perspective.

And so we use this to help point those situations out There's a lot more information on process mining There's a great website.

Just process mining book dot com. It's it's open to the public.

I suggest going in there and reviewing and researching if you haven't already, but I think getting exposure and understanding of process mining is just going to enhance your your operational excellence capabilities.

So, for us, you know, digital transformation means this end to end connectivity of information, breaking down the silos, whereas, in the past, we typically have a handoff process or a stage gate process as we develop a new product.

We want to get to more of a digital thread of information.

So, all of this can be done digitally, we can hand off, we can iterate, do more of an Agile development process, where we're learning as we go, and feeding back, real-time.

and then ultimately we can create a digital twin of that situation, and start becoming more predictive, sir.

Designing in, for quality, for operations, for manufacturer ability.

And so, in order to do that, we've created this concept of a digital core, and data is the center of that where all of our systems are starting to talk to each other. We're adding other layers and platforms that are more enterprise wide.

And, we're starting to connect the dots and create that digital thread of information.

Once we have that, you can really uncover a lot of great insights.

Be able to manage one way of working, the one malik's way of working in a much more consistent manner. And we do that through process mining.

So process mining gives us the insights to make sure that people are following the standard process, that we've got, what we need in place.

And then opens up opportunities for improvement, where people might be veering off course, or parts of our organization need some better guidance or or have learned better practices that we can then share in scale.

And so, you see this, this capability evolve over time.

I think, I think a lot of people are getting onboard for our organization.

You know, this is one of the few technologies, I'll call it, that.

We've introduced that, our entire C suite has really jumped on board, that they clicked right away, that they know there's a lot of waste inherent into our transactional processes, and to, and to have all of our systems that we're applying.

And they needed a mechanism to be able to, to manage it, too, be able to improve it over time, and then ultimately, to give us a sense for, for where they need to make bigger investments or better investments.

And so, when we presented this as a capability, the, the organization really jumped on board, we've got engagements now. Again, in our ERP system.

And then we're looking to be more proactive with our product life cycle and our manufacturing execution systems to really bake this into our plan and our rollout deployment.

21But, you're seeing this trend go across a multitude of industries, its problems primarily, you know, focus in the ERP system, and manufacturing, but I think it's scaling and expanding beyond that.

So, there are a lot of vendors out there. You can research. There's There's Gartner information out there.

We use Shallowness and have worked with ... in the past, as well.

I'm not saying these are the vendors have choice, but just ones that we've worked with and have some pretty good success with. There is also open source capability out there.

So I have a data scientist on my team that can work with prom and some of these other tools to, you know, be able to experiment, and to learn along the way. It's a great learning tool to get people up to speed, to build that internal muscle, if you will, around this capability, But definitely recommend working with vendors that have experience and exposure in this space.

So, we've, uh, we've deployed process mining across various areas of the business, we have plans to scale and expand, and in order to do that, we need a good framework or an approach to this, Develop this framework. It's, it's not perfect by any means, Feel free to to leverage it.

I think it's, you know, rooted in in the six Sigma continuous improvement world with a little bit of an adjustment. So, you'll recognize the types of acronyms, but it's very similar.

I mean, we've been doing continuous improvement like I showed on the previous slide for 10 plus years. It's just a natural fit, that this is another tool that is layered on top of those efforts.

And so, for us, we look at these five steps, so, define aline, design, improve, and control.

And I think probably most importantly is this align concept, and I'll get into each one of these steps and what that looks like, but again, like I said, do you need some type of framework to apply this? Otherwise, it just becomes a use case and you get stuck in that pilot purgatory where you have some goodwin's here and there. But it's not a capability in a muscle that you've built behind that capability.

So I'll walk through the steps and give you a sense for how we approach and what what our concepts are moving forward.

And so from the divine phase, we look at, typically a sidewalk analysis of suppliers, input, process, output's customers.

You'll find this in many six Sigma trainings are a lot of the continuous improvement efforts that are out there already.

And again, we've started with are opportunities in the ERP system. So, we focused in procurement. We focused in supply chain, where there are a lot of people in our systems and our ERP system. We do have a global instance of sap, which is beneficial for us, where we have one system that we can mine, the challenges. Sap is used in a thousand different ways across our network, and so that's where, really, process finding shines is to show, You know, we have this one system, one enterprise wide ERP system, but it's used in all of these different ways, and we've got all these opportunities to consolidate efforts. There's a lot of waste, ways to share better practice.

So we've started an ERP system, gotten some really good wins, we're looking to scale this, like I said, to the PLM and MIS Systems, so recently upgraded those systems.

And as we're looking to deploy, we want to incorporate process mining into that.

The recipe so that when we do define the one mole X way of operating in that MIS environment, we can manage it and monitor it going forward. It's it's baked into the plans.

And so, think about your landscape. Think about where you've got opportunities recommend using the ... approach at a very high level, and then you can dig into the process details from there.

These are just some examples of how you would take it to the next layer.

So, once you've identified where you want to focus and what systems you want to focus, recommend mapping out the process, using whatever tool of choice you decide, But answer these types of questions.

So, what's most important, and what is the enterprise do today?

So, know, that the ideal situation would be, you've got a defined process, you've got a procedure policy behind that, and you can just start there, map that out.

And then you can start mining and seeing what exactly is happening within the organization, across the world.

We we started with some easy processes, things that were pretty well defined that should be pretty consistent, like procure to pay. And we uncovered a lot of good insights that I'll cover here in a minute.

Let's start with mapping that process, understanding what that process looks like.

And then, you start digging in to the opportunity.

So, once you can layer on top of that business process map, the actual activities that are happening. And that's what the process finding tool does is it goes through the thousands of users that are doing that process. And it's trying to understand where there are different flow paths.

And it's making sure that it's calling out anything that's outside of your current standard business process.

So, these are the types of things that, that we're looking at, but questions that we ask. How can we improve the transaction times? What are the differences between regions?

No, again, we have global operations, and we find that different regions do different things.

But it's really just visualizing those opportunities through this, this platform, through this process, mining, technology.

And again, when, when you uncover this, when you shed light and give transparency to these processes, you can really get people excited.

And, and the momentum behind fixing it and getting to where you need to be becomes just just an opportunity of improvement that everybody seems to support.

So after you define, OK, here's your opportunities. Here's where we needed to go.

one of the lessons for us was we needed to assign a global business process owner. So somebody that's got accountability, decision rights, to say, All right, this is what it should be.

And let's look at our landscape and understand where the deviations are, find better practices, make it better, and then kind of draw a line in the sand and say this is what it's going to be, let's go and deploy. And the reason you want to do that is so that you can scale things rapidly. You can make improvements rapidly and then you can manage and monitor it more effectively.

I think a lot of companies skip over this, where it'll still be owned by hundreds of people, or there'll be no owner, and it will become the tragedy of commons for if everybody owns that nobody does.

And so trying to define this is the business owner, This is the the person that's going to take this moving forward. and have the decision rights to make any modifications, I think, is key for for a large organization like like monarchs.

The next step would be looking at ways to improve it. So what's great about process mining, is you can go in and virtually perform what if scenario.

So you can say, if I took out these steps, if I move these steps, what would the impact be to the business, maybe to compliance conformance to any type of standards.

And this is your opportunity, again, to look at benchmarking. So, what does good look like? What should we be doing? A lot of these business processes that we're mapping, they're not unique to ..., the standard operating practice for a lot of manufacturing organizations.

And so we benchmark using companies like Deloitte are Gartner or other organizations to help us define this is the best, best way in industry, based on their knowledge.

And that gives us a sense for, no, let's start there.

As opposed to, you know, some organizations will do a current state map and then a future state map and try to get there.

We start with a blank sheet of paper of what, what should this be? What should it look like Everybody in industry is doing this?

And then we will do a fit gap and say, all right.

Here's how we need to get there where we need to go. And that's been successful for us. It's a different mentality, a different way of working. I think a lot of continuous improvement people have to change some of their mental models that it's not just about current state future state developed Kaizen burst and go on proof.

It's more about what does good look like. Where can we benchmark?

Let's define that first instead of vision and then rally everybody around it to achieve it.

Once you've got a sense for what needs to be improved.

No use, use the continuous improvement tools, It's just not much different than you would do in a manufacturing operation. I would say. The one thing to consider is robotic process automation.

So, you know, there's a lot of companies doing RPA.

I think if you can use process mining to help point you, where RPA makes the most sense where you have thousands of users doing a certain business process, that's repeatable. It looks like there's not a lot of deviation go ahead and apply automation, if it's a requirement.

Ideally, you can get rid of it, And you can manage that in another way.

But if you can't, look to automation, look for RPA to help solve your challenges.

Other than that, you know, use the standard set of toolkit that you can get from Toyota production system, or any Leen type, production environment.

Then the last piece here is just control. So, great thing about process mining is, it's not just a snapshot in time. It's, it's an actual data set that you can manage and monitor moving forward. So, that business process owner then owns this entire business process for your organization long term.

So they're, they're continually monitoring certain measures and metrics to make sure people are following that better practice, to make sure that opportunities are bubbling up.

Screenshot (4)And that, uh, they're able to, to understand that the business process has been defined and is being followed as appropriate.

So, so, I think that is, is a key part of process mining, that a lot of people overlook that. They feel like it's a way to uncover opportunities and fix things. But, I think, more importantly, it's conformance to that one, ..., or the one business process that you're trying to define.

So, I'm gonna gonna give you a high level overview of one of the use cases that we had. So we looked at Procure to Pay.

And again, we have a system wide ERP system. It's sap.

And when we looked at Procure to Pay, which sounds pretty straightforward, we found there were about 900 different versions of this process being deployed across our enterprise. So there was a lot of deviations, lot of extra steps. A lot of sidestepping, or are things where people were adding more complexity than most needed. A lot of it just happens over time. It just slowly builds, because, again, someone made a mistake or a customer found an issue.

And so, they add additional checks. They add additional steps. And so, when we map that out, we said, wow, this is one of our most simple processes, but it has a lot of complexity to it.

And so, that gave us the opportunity to find a, an owner, find somebody to say this, is, you're going to own this process and help define what.

What good looks like can help build that out. Using some benchmarks. We then went in and made some improvements. So, we took out a lot of waste. We've redefined what people worked on. Shifted some people around where we had too many people because they've, they've layered on the complexity and it required a lot of resources to manage.

Then that business process owner now governs and manages how procure to pay is deployed across our network.

These are just some screenshots from software called slowness. We use this.

Basically, what you can find is, you can go through all of your records, so we went through almost two million records.

We had about one point two million purchase orders being reviewed, so we went through years of data and information, just to map out that process and understand where our opportunities, where you can slice and dice it however you want. You just wanna look at the past six months, You wanna look at this region. You want to look at these types of products.

There's lots of different ways to, to analyze this.

But I think, most importantly, it's defining ownership and saying, look at the, the differences across our enterprise, and understand where you can create standardization and help manage this mess.

This is just the mapping of the process. So, again, you want to look at the process map. You want to try to understand what's happening. This is just one snapshot of some of those steps that were added or changed.

And you can see, you know, procure to pay, it should be a pretty straightforward process, maybe 3 to 4 steps.

There groups that are doing lots of different steps.

So, so that the thin lines are less frequent, but it's still a process step that we found and uncovered.

The thick lines are more of the standard processes, and almost everybody does.

And so, this is a good visual to show leadership that, Hey, we think procure to pay is this. This is what it actually is across our enterprise. And there's a lot of opportunity to streamline and improve.

So these are some of the early wins that we had, so gone from 113 days to 98 days in throughput.

That's a big win for us, you know, being able to be quicker at, placing orders, getting things paid for, getting, getting our materials in house, so a lot of good decisions that were made, a lot of people maybe shifted around and just waste elimination to get there.

This is just an example.

But some of the key metrics I would propose, you guys look at, is, around, how many tasks are happening? You want to, again, try to apply RPA to those tasks that are required, but more consistent and redundant.

And here's some other ones that, you know, I don't.

I think that there's any right or wrong metric to measure. I think most importantly, on the bottom here, we have a guiding principle around self actualization.

And you can put yourself in the shoes of some of these no frontline workers that are in these environments that are doing a lot of mundane wasteful activity.

And so for us, it's more about freeing them up to work on more valuable opportunities, and that's kinda the hidden benefit of, of process mining and doing these.

There's obviously savings and an opportunity to streamline, but more importantly, does free people up to work on more valuable stuff.

Last thing you want to do is hire, let's say, a commodity manager, and have them just doing transactional processes, because the process is so complex. You're not taking advantage of their full potential, and ultimately they're not satisfied and achieving this vision that we have around self actualization.

So, just to summarize, you know, you can create this into a one pager, but, but it's about defining the opportunity, understanding the process, using process mining to make things transparent across your whole enterprise.

I think, most importantly, the second step here is aligning. So, having that one business process owner, or somebody that's going to have the decision rights and accountability of deploying whatever process you define.

Screenshot 8-1And, again, what we're trying to do with, with new capability is do this proactively. So signing process owners, giving them this type of capability so that they can manage it moving forward.

You want to design what it looks like. So, I encourage starting with a blank sheet of paper and benchmarking, understanding what this process should be. Because a lot of this is standard across industry has been done for a long time.

And there are better practices that you can find pretty openly, either through a third party or just research on yourself.

Improving.

So manage it through this framework, manage it through continuous improvement style efforts, and then use this to measure and monitor the KPIs that are most impactful to that process. And keep, keep your eye on it.

Because what happens if it is when you take your Iowa and you don't assign the clear accountability, will go right back to where it was. So you want to make sure that you're monitoring it, You've got some cadence of reviews and that you're improving anything as it goes astray.

So that's the framework.

Hopefully this gives you a sense for how process mining helps enable a digital transformation vision. We have this wide vision from product life cycle. All the way through end of life, how we can create a digital thread, and the digital core of information.

Process mining just helps enable that by making sure that we are defining the best process, process we can, and then monitoring and measuring it going forward.

I talked a little bit about the vendor landscape.

Do your research there. There's a lot of information out there. Gartner has a lot of good information.

I'm not soliciting any one vendor, but there's a, there's some good ones out there that, that you can partner with.

How process mining can uncover new insights? So use it as just another lever and your Operational Excellence toolkit as a way to improve transactional processes, Like you would do on the shop floor, where you would do value stream mapping, you can do this for transactional.

Using process mining to assign accountability to incentivize.

And then measuring that value and sustaining it long term.

And then hopefully this framework gave you a sense for an approach. It's not probably the ideal approach, but it'll give you an idea of what are some of the things you need to consider when you go to deploy this type of capability.

Alright, and with that, I do appreciate your time. We'll open it up to any questions that you guys might have.

Fantastics?

Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your insights. Lots of questions came up. Wonderful presentation, Karen ... says, looking forward to resuming this presentation later, because you have gone from from strategic tactical and the cover, all the bases. Anthony: So great stuff. Thank you for, for that, the audience, clearly appreciate.

So, we have, you know, obviously, I strong audience here will offer leaders, and practitioners of business transformation, who, who appreciate the content of your presentation, and the strategic components, and the technical components of the presentation.

So, you're like, you're like, I'm a master, full practitioner, or something, Sometimes you talk about things, and they sound so easy, because you have been doing them well. But, people have asked me, OK. Ask Anthony to slow down, and tell me a little bit more about this.

You said that selling the concept of process mining to senior leaders was kind of straightforward, that they got the idea right away, let me pause. And say, Do not take that for granted. Because a lot of people in this call, and I don't know, as Anna Martinez, is on this call right now, but she's the one that a lot of questions about process mining. And she and she says, how do I sell this to my senior leaders?

So I'm curious, a little bit of behind the scenes behind the curtains here, what was the approach that seemed to flow so well for you that you used when you presented process mining to your senior leaders? How did you approach that? That resonated well with them.

Yeah, so, I'll say, I wasn't alone in the presentation, but when we were able to get the C suite to recognize what process mining is and what it can do for our organization, it was probably the easiest sell I've had to do. We've had to sell on manufacturing execution systems.

And some of our leaders joke that, we couldn't even spell MIS if he gave us the M. So that was a lot of work, just to understand, why do we need this, or something else. When we demonstrated process mining, it really clicked with finance, especially. So finance, live, and breathe these transactional processes, and they know there's a lot of waste. They can feel it.

They know what's happening, but they can't be able to give transparency to it, to help find it once you unlock that, and show that this is what process mining can do, groups like finance, jump all over it, so finance, customer service.

I think you'll have a challenge, maybe, on that, on the shop floor. But eventually, you'll get there.

So start with those processes that are there, well defined, and that people are feeling the pain with.

Excellent, excellent. Another thing that you've talked about that you touched on that that is so critical, and I would likely to spend a little bit more time on, is this discussion on governance and process ownership?

You just said this already in your presentation. You doubt process ownership. It's nearly impossible to have sustainable implementation of this changes. So, however, Stablish, C, Process Ownership, and the larger organization is no trivial matter, because sometimes you that multiple owners will think they own something. Or sometimes, nobody really wants to own it. They just want to complain about it. It's, how do you go about establishing this process owners around the organization?

Yeah. That's a great question. And it's I think the most impactful part of this transformation is having clear ownership of business processes that are corridor, our business, that create competitive advantage.

Without that, these things tend to get into pilot purgatory or don't scale.

And so for us, we started with that vision in mind. So we said, here's our vision, here's where we want to get to.

And it's about that digital thread of from product development, through manufacturing it through end of life, how everything's connected, getting better insights into the digital thread, and then building intelligence on top of it. So everybody could really wrap their head around division.

We did a lot of show Intel's, we had some greenhouse events, and along the way, we always had the mantra. It's people process, then technology.

And the most impactful part of the people side was, we needed, instead of having these silos, and this, um, operations model of hierarchy. We need to carve people out, people that understand these business processes. I call them influential advocates, so that they're pretty key in our business. And our CEO even said, if we're pulling people out and it doesn't hurt the business, that's the wrong people.

So we're pulling these people out and assigning them the enterprise wide ownership of a capability. We call it capability because it's about process. It's about, you know, standing up an organization, it's technology, It's all of it.

21And so, these people came out of the business. They were in good roles, and they're now in more of a strategic role across the enterprise, creating more value.

Um, that was part of our vision. We said, if we can't get that, then forget about this vision. That that's a no brainer.

It's a non negotiable and so that was a big part of, you know, our wider transformation strategy.

That's fantastic. And it's very interesting to hear to listen to you as well, and how you have molded self actualization, which is part of your culture into into into all that you do really, which is, which is looks well done. And now, I'm one of the themes that emerge has to do with the, the, the natural dislocation that happens when you're implementing these technologies, like: and there's no, maybe, not so different, from what, especially, manufacturing environments, where people have a lot of experience. They have been around for a while. Some of them are a little bit cynical about certain things, the new things that you're introducing. And then you go back all the way to the size of Lean. When, when you're talking about implementing Lean and people say, oh, yeah, that's the acronym for less employees are needed, and that's it. And now you come to process my knee and now you have some maybe employees were not skilled in that.

Who feel threatened, will feel like, whoa, how? how do you balance that Versus your need, your your drive for self actualization and the importance of people, How do you overcome that challenge?

Yeah, and that's, um, no challenge, like you said, for Operational Excellence, and has been for a long time. This is us.

I think shifting it from more manufacturing processes, physical processes, more digital, transactional processes.

Where are people made, you know, become heroes for fixing problems and having the world's best Excel spreadsheet and macros.

And so when we define this vision and the strategy, it was about one of our mantra was burn the boats. We're not going to go back to the old way.

I like to term it as burn the Excel files. So we cannot manage a business, our size using Microsoft Excel, and PowerPoint, and e-mail. We need better systems, better platforms, and tools that we can scale and improve. So I think connecting people with the vision is a piece of it. And then I think another big piece of it, we've we've invested pretty heavily in organizational change management. And so we have a team of people that are well versed in those types of skills and capability.

And so, along the way, we're bringing people along where we're helping them along this journey.

And we're working with them to find other avenues where they can create more value. Let's say they, they've got a really wasteful system and they've developed all these tools and capability to manage it.

What we're gonna come in and streamline all of it, but then use that, that energy, that they had to make all of the tools to manage it and put them somewhere else and give them some other opportunities to improve.

Um, that's where, you know, we can align people more closely with what their vision of self actualization is. We have ways that we uncover, you know, their hidden talents or skills, and then be able to apply those to where they have comparative advantage.

Very well very well, Anthony. one final question here because of our time, that's coming from Pranav Gar. ... is asking, OK, I'm taking this off in my company.

What do you, how do you recommend I what kind of criteria should use for prioritizing this areas in my company? where process mining can create the most value? What would be your recommendation on that?

Yeah, I would say your, your value is going to come from two parts, one is the opportunity.

So there's probably a lot of opportunities in finance or wherever, but I think more importantly, is where are you gonna get strategic alignment on investments like this? It can be a pretty substantial investment. And so you need to weigh that.

The business value, the proposition that you have with the teams, and the, the groups that are going to support it, fund it, manage it, and work together to free up resource to keep you going, and keep, keep the momentum going. And so, think about those areas of your business that already have standards in place.

They already have some level of maturity, and they're feeling pain, and, you know, there's, there's issues that you need to uncover.

Again, for us, finance was a big opportunity for us, and they aligned with with some of our vision and our strategy.

So, so think about how you align this to strategy, as well as, find those opportunities for improvement. Tie the two together, and you'll be successful.

Anthony, thank you so much for a great insights, strategic tactical on your journey of transformation and process mining, and .... We appreciate all of the wisdom that you have shared with us today.

Thanks, Joe, there, thanks, everyone, for joining, and feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or need anything else.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

That's Anthony Huffman from more lax sharing his deep experience and expertise on this area of process mining and transformation. Again, he's a senior operational excellence leader at the Anthony ..., and the, and the Any shows, that, you know, the high degree of practical experience that he has gain with this applications. So we are wrapping up now.

The first day of process, my new life, I hope that you had great insights that came from our speakers today, and practical insights that you can apply to your context.

And tomorrow, we're gonna welcome another host, us, wonderful, global speakers. We're gonna start coming from Germany. in the very first session in the morning, We're going to have doctor Julian .... Doctor Julian ... is going to be here with us. Discussing how to, to embed process mining, ensure organization's DNA.

And the And how do you start smart with process money to create the most value for your organization?

Screenshot (4)Then after that, we're gonna, we're gonna move on to Mark Met Greg or Mark McGregor is an author and Performance coach who is an advisor for several technology organizations is going to be with us and discuss. Not only the present, but the future of process mining, what are the shifts occurring and what's the impact of those shifts into process mining technology? So if you want to be on the leading edge of process mining, you want to listen to Mark my graduate, talk about that tomorrow. And we're going to have two other sessions after that. We're gonna go back to London and Frontline, then we're gonna have Caitlin Thomas and ... cache the sand talking to us about using process mining to improve customer experiences. So how organizations are using process mining to, to drive customer experience excellence. So that will be very, very interesting. And then we're gonna switch gears, and we're going to talk to Gene Racing, who is a process improvement leader from Metro in that.

And she's going to talk about project portfolio management in a growing company, and how you do that in a company that, that, that is growing, and it's building capabilities. But also trying to break down some of the silos that have already started to emerge on that growing company. So it's going to be as a practical view of a growing organization that's that's dealing with the need for improvement for Apply. It, for the application of exponential. Technologies like process mining as they scale their growth. So, all of that tomorrow, I look forward to see you back here again at the same time, whether its morning, afternoon or evening, wherever you are in the world. In the meantime there will be updates posted on LinkedIn, under my name is Joseph there is. So, you can just look it up on LinkedIn. If you have comments, feedback questions, want to say thank you to the speakers. Please do. So, we will keep engage in that conversation.

Until we kicked back up at in the morning here in the United States for us, 9 0 AM Eastern Time. As a matter of fact, ITK, like 10 minutes before that. So, 850 AM, Eastern Time, US. Eastern Time, I'm going to kick it off. So, so long from San Antonio, Texas today, I'm actually heading to Houston and I'm going to be broadcasting from Houston, Texas tomorrow. So take care. I'll see you all tomorrow.

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About the Author

more (1)-Apr-05-2021-09-55-56-49-AMAnthony Huffman,
Senior Operational Excellence Manager,
Molex, LLc.

Anthony (Tony) Huffman has over 15 years of operations leadership experience in the electronic solutions, life sciences, and aerospace industries. He has expertise in a range of digital transformation technologies and is a recognized expert in strategy deployment, quality systems, risk management, and EBITDA driven operational excellence. Tony has worked closely with operations leaders across 20 countries, establishing capabilities founded on Koch Industries, Market Based Management®, Danaher Business System, and Toyota Production System. Tony has led hundreds of operational excellence and strategy development events all over the world, including leading c-suite level members. Tony is driven to build and grow organizations, markets, and margins.

He holds a Bachelor's degree in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Iowa State University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Northern Illinois University. He is certified in Operational Excellence, Six Sigma, and Leadership. Tony sits on the Board Advisory Team for the University of Illinois at Chicago; Supply Chain and Logistics Center, and Enterprise Digitalization; Digital Transformation for Manufacturing.

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